The in­te­rior look of your very own home

Are you bold when it comes to in­te­rior dec­o­ra­tion? Do you love mix­ing the lat­est trends with your own per­sonal touch?

Do you col­lect mis­cel­la­neous items and fur­ni­ture? If you an­swered yes to any— or all—of these ques­tions, then “eclec­tic

style” might be for you.

By def­i­ni­tion, eclec­tic means deriv­ing ideas from var­i­ous gen­res, cat­e­gories or trends. For ex­am­ple, in your liv­ing room you could try style com­bi­na­tions like clas­sic and mod­ern, rus­tic and in­dus­trial or retro and Scan­di­na­vian. Don’t be afraid to com­bine and con­trast as many styles as you like.

Pulling this style off re­quires fi­nesse, how­ever. You want to avoid cre­at­ing a chaotic, dis­jointed space. To ace the style, choose a main thread that’s com­mon to all of your dec­o­ra­tive el­e­ments; this could be a ma­te­rial (wood, stone, leather, wool), a colour scheme (warm, cool, metal­lic, pas­tel), or a theme (va­ca­tion mem­o­ries, wildlife scenes, flow­ers).

It’s a good idea to make one piece the fo­cal point of your room. A Louis XV arm­chair, a large ab­stract paint­ing, a grand­fa­ther clock or a dra­matic

sculp­ture are all good can­di­dates. Once you’ve set­tled on a main item to fo­cus on, ar­range the rest of your dec­o­ra­tive ob­jects to high­light it.

Avoid this

A clas­sic er­ror that eclec­tic style lovers make is cross­ing the line into ex­cess. Make sure you keep things bal­anced so your room doesn’t look like a flea mar­ket, and don’t over­crowd floors, walls or sur­faces with too many un­re­lated knick­knacks.